


no one can find the rewind button now

by nott_the_best1



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Buck Centric, Canon Compliant, Gen, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, post 3x05, short & sad tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:47:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21564016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nott_the_best1/pseuds/nott_the_best1
Summary: in which buck receives a voicemail
Comments: 6
Kudos: 82





	no one can find the rewind button now

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know why i wrote this
> 
> (title from breathe (2 am) by anna nalick)

Buck gets home from the rage room a bit buzzed. He’s feeling better than he was earlier that evening, even if he is still apprehensive. He doesn't know how everyone will treat him when he returns to the station, but now he has at least of sliver of hope that he can win them back over. He has to; they’re all he has. It’s Eddie that he’s worried about. He hadn't showed up to the rage room, and Buck hates how they'd left things at the grocery store.

Eddie's words keep replaying in his head. He knew keeping his distance would be difficult for him, but he hadn't thought that it would affect Eddie and Christopher. After all, they have Eddie's abuela and aunt and Carla. They have each other. Ever since the bombing, all he’s been is a burden to them. A liability. He didn't think that he was that important. He’d even nearly gotten Christopher killed. His friend told him that it wasn’t his fault, and Buck could put it aside when he was with Chris because that kid is so happy and alive and full of love. But when he wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, he knows that it was his fault that he fell back into the water. How could he have screwed this up so badly?

When he closes his eyes, he just wants to rewind everything. Go back to that morning Eddie dragged him out of bed and take Christopher to the movies instead of the Santa Monica pier. Go back to that night of the bombing and get in the fire engine with the rest of his team instead of that ladder truck. Then none of this would have even happened. No crush injury, no pulmonary embolism, no medical leave, no pier, no lawsuit. None of it. Sometimes, he even wishes he never moved to LA at all. It hurts to think of a world where he never meets Eddie or Bobby or Chris or Athena, Chimney, Hen. Any of the people he’s come to love. Even Abby. But he can’t help but feel like if he’d never come to Los Angeles, he would have saved everyone a whole lot of trouble.

He sighs and opens his phone. There’s a missed call and a voice message from an unknown number. Probably a telemarketer. He opens it, and sure enough, a robot lady begins to tell him how she can help him find affordable homeowners insurance. He deletes the message, but something catches his eye. An unopened voicemail from Eddie. On the day of the tsunami. He hadn’t used his voicemail on this phone yet, so he never saw it. He takes a long, slow breath and opens it. 

> _"Hey, Buck, it's me. I just want you to tell Christopher I'll be a little late picking_ _him up, got our hands full here. It's a good thing you're missing it. Hope you guys_ _are having fun."_

He pauses for a moment, then puts the phone on speaker and plays it again. And again. What had they been doing when Eddie left that voicemail? Were they underwater? Clinging to debris, trying desperately not to drown? Huddling next to each other on a fire engine, trying to ignore that they were cold and wet and death was floating all around them? Sometimes, in his nightmares, he’s back on that fire engine. Whether with Christopher or alone, he sits and watches dead bodies float past him, again, but this time, they’re the bodies of his friends. His sister. The worst nights, the body is Christopher’s. Eddie’s is a close second. 

_It’s a good thing you’re missing it. Hope you guys are having fun._ It was better that way, Eddie not knowing. As a first responder, not knowing things you cannot control is a gift. But it was more than that, Buck was glad that no one had been worried about him. He was tired of people worrying about him, especially after everything that had happened. He was tired of the scared faces, scared because of him. Scared for him, maybe, but because of him nonetheless. It was a bittersweetness, though, knowing that in the moments that him and Christopher had been drowning, dying, terrified, crying out for help, no one even knew that they were in danger. They’d been alone. 

Buck plays the message again. 

How could he have messed this up so badly? He was trying to fix everything, but instead he ruined it even more. He had been sad and tired and desperate, and his choices hurt everyone he cared about. His hands shake as he places his phone on the counter, but there are no tears. There are none left. He is empty. He’d cried himself to sleep the night before, but now he is only numb. He feels broken. Like some fundamental part of him broke, and he can’t place when exactly it happened. 

That night, when he finally falls asleep, he is met with another nightmare. Another fire engine nightmare with the bodies floating by, but this time he’s not the one standing on the truck. He’s looking over the whole scene as Eddie peers over the edge of the truck into the water. Christopher is nowhere in sight. And this time, the body floating through the street is Buck’s.


End file.
